Conversations with Avant-garde Sages - The Wizard LLC

Conversations with Avant-garde Sages
your viewpoints for a moment, even if you're feeling anxious in the
body, you can let that energy just be there in the body.
So the second part of it is just that, it comes from an old teaching,
letting all the appearances be as they are. I've heard many
teachers talk about that, it was really, really helpful for me, it's also
an old Dzogchen practice, but it just means that from that place
that's recognizing awareness as always present, you start to see
that awareness is like space in that it doesn't come and go, it's not
moving anywhere, it's just awake and always available. But all of
the appearances are coming and going, so all of the thoughts, and
the emotions, the sensations, the experiences, the states, all the
colors, the object, everything in the phenomenal world is coming
and going within your view. And so the suffering and the seeking,
and the conflict comes from instead of recognizing yourself as that
space in which all the appearances are coming and going, there
tends to be a clinging towards the various appearances. So it
might be a view of myself like a thought that says, I'm not worthy,
or I'm unattractive, or for whatever reason, I'm in debt and I'm
going to retire as a homeless person, or whatever. Those are
appearances, those are thoughts we suffer because instead of
relaxing as the open awareness that we are, we move and cling, we
so to speak, emphasize that viewpoint and then add other
viewpoints on it, and then we feel lost in that phenomenal world of
thought, when all we ever have to do is relax again and recognize
that we're the space in which the thoughts are coming, and just
literally to stare at the thought as you would stare at a star at
night. And when you stare at a thought that way, it melts away
into space, it loses its force.
So that's the second part of this, just letting all the appearance be
as they are, and that means getting people out of their heads from
the neck up, and more into their body from the neck down, so that
they can begin to experience the bodily sensations and emotions
that have been there all their life, but they weren't directly aware
of them. So for example, if a thought comes to you and says, I'm
going to retire as a homeless person and I'm going to lose
everything. With that thought there's usually a corresponding
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